Apple strikes back at Adobe, says Flash is 'closed and proprietary'

In a rare public comment, Apple's public relations department responded Wednesday to criticisms from the project manager for Adobe Flash, suggesting his recent criticism of Apple was "backwards."

In a statement to CNet's DeepTech, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Miller fired back at Adobe's Mike Chambers, who revealed this week that his company was abandoning its investment in a feature that would allow Flash applications to be ported natively to the iPhone OS. Chambers also made comments suggesting that Apple's closed system was restrictive to developers — an allegation that caught the ire of Apple.

"Someone has it backwards — it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe's Flash is closed and proprietary," Apple's Miller said in the statement.

While Apple's stance should come as no surprise, the fact that it offered comment on the matter is unique for the notoriously secretive company. When Apple introduced iPhone OS 4 earlier this month, company co-founder Steve Jobs was asked if there were any plans to add support for Adobe Flash. Jobs simply responded, "No."

But privately, Jobs has allegedly been very outspoken about Flash in recent months. At a company meeting in January, the CEO was rumored to have called Adobe "lazy," and said most Mac crashes are due to Flash. "The world is moving to HTML5," Jobs was quoted as saying.

Jobs also allegedly called Flash a "CPU hog" in a meeting with officials from The Wall Street Journal. The Apple co-founder was said to have called the Web format "full of security holes" and "old technology."

Adobe employees and supporters have fired back publicly since Apple revealed the iPad, which does not support Flash. Then, earlier this month, Apple took it one step further and specifically prohibited the development of applications using "an intermediary translation or compatibility layer tool." The change to the iPhone OS developer agreement means that software originally written for formats like Adobe's Flash cannot be ported to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Adobe's forthcoming Creative Suite 5 includes software that allows Flash developers to port their software to the iPhone, though Adobe will no longer advance that technology due to Apple's changes.

One Adobe supporter suggested Apple timed the announcement to hurt sales of CS5. Jobs, in an e-mail, defended the move and said that intermediary software only results in substandard applications.

In a rare public comment, Apple's public relations department responded Wednesday to criticisms from the project manager for Adobe Flash, suggesting his recent criticism of Apple was "backwards."

"Someone has it backwards -- it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe's Flash is closed and proprietary," Apple's Miller said in the statement.

But privately, Jobs has allegedly been very outspoken about Flash in recent months. At a company meeting in January, the CEO was rumored to have called Adobe "lazy," and said most Mac crashes are due to Flash. "The world is moving to HTML5," Jobs was quoted as saying.

Jobs also allegedly called Flash a "CPU hog" in a meeting with officials from The Wall Street Journal. The Apple co-founder was said to have called the Web format "full of security holes" and "old technology."

One Adobe supporter suggested Apple timed the announcement to hurt sales of CS5. Jobs, in an e-mail, defended the move and said that intermediary software only results in substandard applications.

Flash is not necessary.

I can't believe we're once again going over the same crap again (Note the first time were the browser specific tags that Microsoft fostered in order to defeat Netscape)

How many times do you have to tell people that the Internet needs to be open and accessible to as many people as possible without having to pay some company?

It's interesting to see Google begin to cave on open internet as well (embracing Flash on Android) . Their integrity and "do no evil" mantra seems to erode a bit more day by day.

Adobe had better pray that there is never an iPhone on Verizon because the Droid is the only reason why Android has any market share.

This will be taken care of next year is presume.

Tim Cook (I believe) all but said that there are only 3 areas where the iPhone has single carrier exclusity (Spain, US and another country). He mentioned that they had already made of their mind about the US market.

It's interesting to see Google begin to cave on open internet as well (embracing Flash on Android) . Their integrity and "do no evil" mantra seems to erode a bit more day by day.

"do no evil" is just a feel good marketing slogan and has been for some time.

What amuses me are the sppeople who criticize iAd and then turn around and praise Android. I always wonder just why they think google and android exist. It's not for search or to better the smartphone market - at least that's not their primary goal.

Edit: indeed, all one has to do is look at the bottom of this page to see what google is about!

"do no evil" is just a feel good marketing slogan and has been for some time.

What amuses me are the sppeople who criticize iAd and then turn around and praise Android. I always wonder just why they think google and android exist. It's not for search or to better the smartphone market - at least that's not their primary goal.

Edit: indeed, all one has to do is look at the bottom of this page to see what google is about!

Clearly

Much like Politicians some people take a fondness for a person or company which apparently abstract from logical reasoning.

I had my google account compromised and by the time I got my password reset 3.6 GB of archived email was GONE.

I'm seriously debating jettisoning my google account. I don't really need Google Reader as I'm becoming more comfortable with Twitter for getting info. I have Mobileme now so I have acceptable email and calendar that syncs easy with my Mac and the cloud.

The only downside is that this will cost me about 7 dollars a month but in the end that's chump change.

My internet life has become so much better since installing Click2Flash. That speaks volumes about how negative the ratio of useful/annoying Flash really is for me.